First lady says people don’t need high-fructose corn syrup, encourages home cooking

The Easter Egg Roll used to be one of the simplest, crowd-pleasing occasions at the White House, but today’s 136th event is likely to cause controversy in many parts of the food and agriculture industries.

There was a sign on the kitchen garden reading “organic farming” and First Lady Michelle Obama participated in a cooking demonstration for kids that promoted salads and smoothies, dissed high-fructose corn syrup, iodized salt and ranch dressing, and encouraged families to eat less in restaurants and cook more at home.

Since 2009 when the first lady and a group of school children planted the first White House kitchen garden since Eleanor Roosevelt’s World War II victory garden, officials have gone out of their way to say that the garden is not officially organic.

Those statements came in part from the fact that under Agriculture Department organic certification rules, food cannot be declared organic until the soil in which it has been produced has been free of “prohibited substances” such as synthetic fertilizer and pesticides for three years.

White House officials have said Obama and her staff use “organic practices” but they also hinted that they did not want to declare the garden “organic” because such strict rules might deter people from gardening or upset the conventional agricultural industries.

Today a sign on the temporary fence over which 30,000 White House visitors could look into the kitchen garden said “organic farming.” No further explanation was given.

First Lady Michelle Obama is joined by chef Marc Murphy and Debby Ryan, lead actress on the Disney Channel sitcom "Jessie," at a Play with Your Food session at this morning's White House Easter Egg Roll. (From White House video)

A few yards away on the South Lawn, First Lady Michelle Obama hosted a 14-minute cooking demonstration in which she followed Marc Murphy, a judge on Food Network’s hit show “Chopped,” into declaring that people don’t need to use high fructose corn syrup, and made other suggestions about home cooking.

When the first lady arrived at a raised platform labeled the Kids’ Kitchen, she joined Murphy and the cast of the Disney tween comedy “Jessie,” which chronicles the life of an affluent New York City family who have four adorable kids, including a boy from India and a girl from Uganda, and a 21-year-old nanny, a Texan who is chasing dream of becoming an actress.

   At left, Chef Marc Murphy makes a kale and fruit smoothie with Cameron Boyce and Peyton R. List, who play “Luke” and “Emma.” At right: joining the first lady are Skai Jackson, center, and Karan Brar, who play “Zuri” and “Ravi” on the Disney Channel show “Jessie.” (From White House video)

As “Jessie” actors Karan Brar, 15, and Skai Jackson, 12, stepped to the stage to help Murphy make a fruit salad of blueberries, mango, raspberries and blackberries, the chef noted that Jackson had said she likes honey mixed with the fruit.

“You told me the best part is the honey,” Murphy said. “Let’s drizzle a little honey in there … Honey is a great way to sweeten things, it is sort of a natural sweetener.”

“Why is honey better than sugar?” the first lady asked.

“Our bodies can deal with honey,” Murphy said. “The high-fructose corn sugar is a little harder to … I don’t think our bodies know what do with that yet.”

“Did you hear that?,” the first lady replied. “Our bodies don’t know what to do with high-fructose corn syrup. So we don’t need it.”

Murphy noted that there are bee hives on the White House lawn, and Obama added that the kitchen garden this year includes a pollinator garden.

“We are trying to increase the amount of monarch butterflies and bees because a lot of the hives are dying out and we don’t know why,” Obama said. “If we don’t have bees, we won’t have honey, we won’t have food. That’s how plants grow — through pollination. So we’re trying to do our part with a pollinator garden.”

“Jessie” cast members Cameron Boyce, 14, and Peyton List, 16, came to the stage to help in the preparation of a kale smoothie with apples, carrots and fruit.

Obama noted that blueberries and strawberries will help “sweeten up” the kale smoothie so that kids will eat their vegetables without realizing it, and said she has one almost every day.

In what might be considered a rebuke to those students who have protested that school meals under the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act don’t have enough calories, Murphy suggested eating a peanut butter/banana-almond milk smoothie for energy before playing a baseball game.

Boyce declared that he and Peyton make those smoothies on the set of “Jessie” all the time.

“We’re like caterers,” Boyce said.

Peyton added that she likes to add a bit of agave to the peanut butter-almond milk smoothie to make it sweeter.

“Agave is one of those other things that you can have that your body can break down instead of a fake sugar, I call it,” Murphy added.

“What would you tell kids who would rather have a bag of chips and a soda about this as a snack alternative?” Obama asked.

“It’s really important to have a healthy diet,” said Boyce, who noted that he “used to eat chocolate ice cream every night,” but has changed his diet over the past year.

“It helps with your skin, how you feel,” he said. “You wake up. It just helps your body a lot. You just feel good, you feel accomplished after you’ve eaten healthy.”

Obama said she has found that with young people “like these guys who are in the movies, on TV, or athletes — they are way ahead of the game in terms of doing what it takes to take care of their bodies because their bodies, their faces are their careers.”

As the others on the stage laughed, Obama added, “Their brains, all that stuff too. Having clear skin helps.” For young people dealing with acne or who are athletes learning to eat healthy “puts you far ahead of the game,” she said.

Debby Ryan, who plays lead character Jessie Prescott, then came to the stage to make a Greek salad, which Obama declared to be “advanced” meal preparation.

Ryan, 20, noted she had switched to healthier snacks a few years ago, then moved to healthier meals such as salads with “some protein” such as feta case.

“It’s really good protein so you don’t feel like you’re grazing,” Ryan said.

Feta also happens to be one of the foods that the European Union has granted a protected designation-of-origin as being made only of sheep’s and goat’s milk in Greece. These “geographical indicators” are an issue in the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations.

Ryan did not mention where her feta cheese comes from, but said that putting it in the salad has allowed her to switch from calorie-laden ranch dressing to oil and balsamic vinegar.

“You have more energy,” she said. “After ranch I wanted to take a nap.”

The first lady chimed in by noting, “Dressing is supposed to be an enhancement. It’s not supposed to be the meal. … Don’t overdress the salad.”

Too much dressing, she said, wilts vegetables “and takes all the excitement out of it.”

In restaurants, Obama noted, “they don’t overdress” the salad, which led Murphy to remark that guests who ask for dressing on the side are making a mistake because “you can’t mix it properly at a table in a restaurant. It is better to have it done in the kitchen where they do it properly with the right tools.”

Ryan also said she wanted to add salt and pepper to the salad, prompting Obama to ask, “What is the difference between kosher salt and any regular kind of salt?

Murphy said that as a professional chef he prefers kosher salt because it is a thicker grind and it spreads more easily. “The iodized salt to me doesn’t have the right flavor.”

“Kids have got to know where the food comes from,” through gardens, shopping or helping chop vegetables, Murphy said.

“The message here today for families is that getting back in the kitchen is really one of the keys to good health,” the first lady added.

“Part of what we are doing this year with ‘Let’s Move’ is we are trying to encourage families to cook just to cook a little more. If you cook it and prepare it at home it is guaranteed to be healthier, you’re got to have better portion sizes and you will be able to engage kids in the process.”

Adults can start by cooking “just one more meal at home,” she said, unless they “are eating out very day of the week,” in which they should start with two.

And if the home-cooked food is not delicious, she said, “don’t eat it. You should figure out how to make healthy food delicious because there is a way to do it.”

• USDA — Organic Production/Organic Food
• (Video) White House — Play with Your Food with First Lady Michelle Obama
• Food Network — Marc Murphy
• Disney Channel — “Jessie”
• European Commission — Geographical Indications

Photos by Jerry Hagstrom/The Hagstrom Report In addition to rolling eggs with a spoon and other activities such as painting, children learned where eggs come from, in a barn that included chickens.

Matthew Paul D’Agostino, photographer for the White House Historical Association, takes a picture from the farmers market display, which provided free fruit at the Easter Egg Roll. It was sponsored by Walmart after years of being sponsored by Whole Foods, Obama Foodorama reported.


  At left: From left, White House chef Sam Kass, Dr. Mehmet Oz of “The Dr. Oz Show,” and Dr. Olajide Williams of the Hip Hop Public Health Foundation. The foundation works to curb the risks associated with chronic and acute diseases. At right: President Barack Obama walks down to the South Lawn to read a story to chidlren at the Easter Egg Roll. At left is Ellie Schafer, director of the White House Visitors' Office, who supervises the event. Schafer, who has worked for Obama since the 2008 campaign, is the daughter of former Agriculture Secretary and North Dakota Republican Gov. Ed Schafer.

Children learn about plants at a booth with members of the American Society of Plant Biologists.
  
At left: Mr. Carrot promoted vegetable consumption. Susie Morrison, a White House pastry chef, talks to a mother and child.

Parents and children visit the Agriculture Department’s exhibit on the "My Plate" program.